BostInno
This MIT Professor Invented a Toy Lamp that Helps Girls Develop STEM Skills
By: Lucia Maffei
Maria Yang is a mechanical engineer at MIT, where she teaches product design, and a CIO. But her last title doesn’t stand for Chief Information Officer. Instead, she calls herself “the Chief Inspiration Officer” of Jubilite, the company she co-founded a year ago.
“Our students come to us and they’re really good at math, and they’re good verbally,” she said during an interview in her office at MIT. “But what we see that a lot of students aren’t prepared to think with their hands.”
She and parent company Brainy Yak Lab's CEO and co-founder Tony Hu asked themselves how to stimulate “the making approach” in kids. After many prototypes, they came up with the idea of a night lamp that kids can assemble and decorate.
“It kind of builds into a very popular category, which is arts and crafts. A lot of kids, but especially girls, focus on that. And then, we combine it with electronics,” Yang said.
Their interest in arts and crafts could be the perfect opportunity to expose girls to STEM skills and fields. As Hu pointed out, girls’ interest in math and science tends to drop around the 6th and 7th grade. Also, the majority of toys with an electronic twist, such as drones and robots, are boy-focused.
Aimed at kids age 8 to 12, the Jubilite lamp comes in a kit of around 20 electrical components that kids can assemble. The kit also includes step-by-step instructions, a vocabulary of technical terms and a screwdriver. Once the lamp is completed, kids can also decorate it with a series of stickers, markers and hanging elements (decorations can be reused). Batteries are not included.
According to Yang, assembling the lamp requires up to 30 minutes, while decorating may take up to two hours. A series of buttons at the bottom of the lamp allows kids to change the mode and the speed of light. There are several modes, from “rainbow” to “twilight” and “disco.”
While assembling the lamp, kids can learn, for example, what a PCB (printed circuit board) or a diode are.
Three weeks ago, Yang and Hu started a campaign on Kickstarter that will be opened until June 7. So far, they have raised over $28,500.
The company, which has a physical office in Belmont, said it is planning on selling the lamp online but also in traditional stores. The basic kit of Jubilite costs $39.95 and the deluxe edition $59.95.
“We tested the lap with hundreds of kids, and one of them said: ‘I can’t believe I made this [...]. I feel like I can do something that is technical,'” Yang said.
